A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
No 51 “THE WIRELESS “ pb 20.08.2010
In the Groat of July 9th 2010 we mentioned the “wire”, the bearer of news good and bad, the news received by Wm Tait in his Diary entry of Jan 22nd 1907 of his brother James of J. & W. Tait’s sudden death. Which poses the question of progression to the “wireless”
My earliest recollection of a wireless is the huge long grey box in the sitting room, our own very first wireless. Dials and whatnots on the outside and tubes and valves and wires and goodness knows what inside. As visitors would often say, big enough to sink the Queen Mary!!
The wireless was bought by our Uncle John for his parents on a visit back home from Invercargill in New Zealand in 1924, but perhaps really a toy for the surgeon to play with. At least family lore has it that our grandfather said to his son, “Johnny me boy, stop playan wae that box o’ b***** rubbish and talk to me “
As Uncle John had come a long way with a six week sea voyage home fromm N.Z., and had been away for many years including the War of 1914 to 1918, it seemed a very reasonable thing for his old father to ask. In any case it would be the last they saw of each other, Da dying on 19th March 1930, aged 79.
A flag pole erected at the far end of the tennis lawn at Whitehall did service as an attachment point for one end of the long aerial, the other end attached to a bracket on the end of the house. Huge white porcelain insulators on either end of the aerial. Then a wire lead down the wall and in through the sill of the bow window of the sitting room. There was also an earth wire returning through the sill and buried in the ground outside. Reception was intermittent, and when the Merry Dancers filled the sky to the North we used to get what we said was them talking to us, but in reality I suppose just an increase in background static.
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The old wireless did function but we were a long way from transmitters so reception was at best dodgy, accompanied by squeaks and crackles and pops. At times complete silence. Islands always had and still have someone knacky, totally untrained in a formal sense but amazingly knowledgeable for all that. Now and again our father had someone along who would take a look inside the monster, tweet this or that, find a loose wire, and for a while sweet music again.
When we took an interest in the magic box I cannot recall. But enough was enough, with War approaching by 1938 our father was certainly trying to get better reception. So he bought a new Pye, a wireless that did well enough and worked for a very long time later in Greenland Mains after we came there in 1944.
A dry battery and two rechargeable wet batteries - accumulators - with one usually being recharged at Swanneys in Whitehall Village. The Pye was a good wireless, and we used to play around with the tuning knob and get Hilversum and Berlin and Droitwich and other exotic foreign stations, some times in Orkney a better reception than British.
A wireless was a precious possession in many a house or cottage, and must have cost a farm worker a fair bit of his wage, but extremely popular. I do not recollect any house without one, though there must have been some. A look at his watch or the alarm clock on the dresser in the kitchen/cum living room of the farm cottage and the farm worker would say “Switch on the wireless and get the news”. The wireless was definitely not on all the time, it used up the batteries. Any background music would come from a wind up gramophone and a record or two which was used over and over again until scratched beyond repair and it gave up the ghost.
Any old wireless found a home elsewhere when superseded by a new one. Broken ones were taken apart and repaired or rebuilt by some local enthusiast. I cannot now recall names with any certainty but usually someone in the Village. Some made one for themselves out of bits and pieces and an old instruction book. Swanneys’ little engine and charging dynamo system out the back of the shop and bakehouse seemed to be always going, chugging away night and day and charging the Islands batteries.
This is all a far cry from today with constant music, sometimes quite obtrusive,
the name wireless superseded by radio, then in turn by a multitude of trade names. School pupils going down-town in Thurso at lunch time with something or other stuffed in their ears. Traffic hazard I think !!
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The high point in our Stronsay wireless listening came with the outbreak of the War of 1939 to 1945. Much news, a great deal sad, some good, getting better as the War progressed, as much as the Government thought we should know and hear. And the Germans helped our wireless reception with Lord Haw Haw top of the pops though we did not use that phrase then. Aka William Joyce
The wireless station was Reichsender Hamburg, with the catch phrase “Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany calling”. The program broadcast from Hamburg started on 18 September 1939 and continued until 30 April 1945, when Hamburg was overrun by the British Army. (Wikipedia)
Joyce’s gravelly voice was instantly recognisable, slightly nasal. He was an American born in Brooklyn, his Irish father a naturalised US citizen. They left the USA when he was quite young and came back to Ireland, though Joyce still kept a touch of the USA in his voice. He was said in a quote by novelist Cecil Roberts in Wikipedia to be;-
“Thin, pale, intense, he had not been speaking many minutes before we were electrified by this man, so terrifying in its dynamic force, so vituperative, so vitriolic.I
His voice was indeed compelling. Even from outside a house we would hear and recognise it.
He was highly intelligent, did many things in England, some political, before being drawn into the Germany of the Nazis. In late August 1939, shortly before war was declared, Joyce and his wife Margaret fled to Germany. Joyce had been tipped off that the British authorities intended to detain him under Defence Regulation 18B. Joyce became a naturalised German in 1940. Eventually to Broadcasting. The rest is History, not my remit, though his story is worth looking up on the Internet. He was hanged for Treason on 3rd January, 1946. Got a very dodgy deal I think, but it was bad times.
Reichssender Hamburg was possibly the most widely listened to wireless programme we had. It had its own time slot to which Stronsay tuned in religeously.
Lord Haw Haw gave us the dispositions of British troops, where your son was before even his family knew, sometimes telling of someone taken prisoner, name, rank and number before any notification from the War 0ffice in London. He told us the Germans had sunk the Aircraft Carrier Ark Royal three times at least before U 81 did indeed torpedo her off Gibralter on 13th Nov. 1941, with terminable damage, sinking next day. Lord Haw Haw gave us much information denied to home listeners, where such and such a Regiment was, who had over-run whom, and of course only German victories were mentioned. In the early days of the War there were all too many of those.
It was indeed uncanny how so much Home information was at his command, and in his own way he kept us up to date with the War.
William Joyce, aka Lord Haw Haw, was indeed compulsive wireless listening.
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